In the wake of Ravens special-teams ace Brendon Ayanbadejo taking a strong public stance supporting same-sex marriage, one of his teammates has expressed an opposing view on this high-profile political topic.
Six-time Pro Bowl center Matt Birk, a Catholic and married father of six children who grew up in St. Paul, Minn., has appeared in an online video for the Minnesota Catholic Conference where he asks voters to keep marriage between only a man and a woman. Birk also wrote an editorial that appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Birk emphasized today that his political views won't divide the locker room, adding that he alerted Ayanbadejo before the editorial ran in the newspaper to make sure he wouldn't be caught off guard.
"I took a stance like other guys have done before me," Birk said today at team headquarters. "In doing so, it's really not my aim not my goal to engage in any debates with any one person or persons. Obviously, we all have opinions. They have their opinions. It just so happens that we disagree on what marriage is in the public forum. It's certainly a very inflammatory, very hot topic, because it's important. I understand that. Out of respect to my teammates and my team and the organization, this isn't going to turn into a circus. It probably won't be the last time that I publicly take a stance on it. I'm just asking you guys out of respect for everybody that my focus and our focus here is on football and on winning football games.
"I let Brendon know that I respect him because I've known Brendon for a while and I played with his brother [Obafemi Ayanbadejo]. And I like Brendon and I respect him a lot. I told him on Friday that I was going to have a piece coming out. I wanted to let him know so he wouldn't be blindsided by it. I haven't had a chance to talk to him today."
"... in Washington State and elsewhere the terms "husband" and "wife" were made to be gender-neutral. That means can be a man can legally be called a wife and a woman can legally be a husband. That might just be a laughable oddity until you think it through. Do you want your children or grand children being taught that men can husbands and women can have wives? Traditional roles in marriage will no longer be taught because they will no longer be available. Gay activists are already at work trying to do the same thing here in Minnesota. In California and Canada, children are taught they can actually choose their own gender."
"...The destruction of even as important a word as "marriage" does not mean necessarily that we would arrive in the world of Orwell's Big Brother. There is always the hope that decency and common sense somehow will prevail. But none of us will know in our lifetimes what the full effects of this change would be.
Overturning 20 centuries of wisdom demands more thought and respect than the proponents of this law have given us. Our state and our children deserve better.
What to do is simple. It is not a poll or a focus group or a high-powered advertising campaign that will decide this question. We will all have a chance to step into a voting booth with no one else present, and to vote for what we think is right."
Connie Rossini of New Ulm, MN writes to the editor:
"The proponents of same-sex "marriage" would have us believe that marriage is all about how two adults feel for each other. It's not. It's about the well-being of children. Throughout history, there have been many types of relationships - sexual or not - among adults, but few have been called marriage. Marriage has always had an exclusive role in society. It ties mothers and fathers to their biological children and gives the children their best chance to thrive.
Not all heterosexual couples are capable of having children, but they can all provide a mother and father to the children they may take in. Same-sex couples can't do this. Men cannot be moms. Women cannot be dads..."
Eric Lee writes to the Baltimore Sun that opposing gay marriage is not about hate:
"Now, imagine if I went into my favorite vegetarian restaurant tomorrow and found out that there was a movement under way to start selling hamburgers there, while still calling the restaurant vegetarian. I go up to the manager and protest: "Hamburgers are not a vegetarian food — they're meat! How can you serve this in a vegetarian restaurant?" He replies: "I am redefining what it means to be a vegetarian." To which I would respond, emphatically: "But being a vegetarian is something special, something different from being someone who eats meat. It's been this way ever since the term vegetarian was invented! If you want to serve hamburgers, then you can do it, but you're not a vegetarian restaurant anymore." Says he: "I don't care about what you think vegetarianism is, or what anyone else throughout history thinks; I am redefining it because I want to, for my own reasons. Vegetarians should stop discriminating and accept meat eaters as being vegetarian too. I think you should stop hating meat eaters and let them have the equal right of being vegetarian — after all, what makes you so special?"
...What I and other traditional marriage supporters are standing for is the uniqueness and goodness that by nature manifest themselves only in a marriage between a man and a woman.
So if you see this vegetarian driving his hybrid car with a little bumper sticker supporting traditional marriage, please know that I do not hate you, even if you are planning on voting the opposite way from me on Question 6. I hope you will return the "no hate" favor to me as well. I am also asking, before you cast your vote, that you please try to understand how those opposed to redefining marriage think. Please understand that we are very much hoping to keep the definition of marriage as the beautiful institution it is now in my family, the way it was for me growing up, and the way it has been from time immemorial as the basis of human society.
This is why I am going to vote against Question 6 — in order to uphold and support marriage as an exclusive, loving relationship between one man and one woman."
"...Jump the Broom for Marriages, a Baltimore-based ballot issue committee, objects to same-sex unions of any sort on religious grounds.
“God’s word states that marriage is between one man and one woman,” said Alethia Williams, the group’s campaign manager. “That’s what our organization is about.”
Jump the Broom for Marriage takes its name from a traditional African-American wedding ritual that dates back to slavery, and its website defines the act as “the first civil right.” In the upcoming vote on the law, the black vote will make the difference, Williams said.
The group, which runs a call center out of Baltimore, has distributed more than 100,000 pieces of campaign literature, Williams said. The campaign is focusing on Prince George’s and Howard counties and Baltimore city, she said."
So says a County Attorney’s declaration filed on May 22, 2012 in a federal case challenging the polygamy ban on constitutional grounds:
The policy, as officially adopted by the ... County Attorney’s Office, states:
Prosecution of Bigamy Crimes:
The ... County Attorney’s Office will prosecute the crime of bigamy ... in two circumstances: (1) When a victim is induced to marry through their partner’s fraud, misrepresentations or missions; or (2) When a person purports to marry or cohabits with another person ... and is also engaged in some type of abuse, violence or fraud. This office will prosecute the crime of child bigamy ... regardless of whether one of the parties is also engaged in some type of abuse, violence or fraud....
This policy is intended, under the prosecutorial discretion exercised by this Office, to prevent the future prosecution ... of bigamous marriages entered into for religious reasons.
Gay marriage is on a roll internationally -- of losing:
The Northern Ireland assembly has rejected a motion calling for same-sex couples to be married in the province.
A joint proposal by Sinn Fein and the Green party to allow gay marriage was defeated because the Democratic Unionists (DUP) ensured that it would have to obtain cross community support in the parliament to succeed.
Under the rules of the Stormont parliament, any party can trigger a so-called petition of concern on a motion that then can only pass if the majority of nationalists and unionists back it. The rule was drawn up to protect minorities and ensure that there would never be a return to unionist domination of the assembly. In this instance the DUP used the law to scupper any move to liberalise the law on gay marriage.
Only three unionist assembly members out of 45 voted in favour of gay equality. Both the DUP and the Ulster Unionists came under pressure over the weekend from the Protestant churches not to change the law on gay marriage.
In a letter to assembly men and women the Presbyterian church said it was "not merely an issue of conscience for Christian people and churches, but a very significant one for the whole of society". -- The Guardian
We know we won't be able to outspend our opponents—they've already reserved millions of dollars in airtime to confuse voters, hoping that they will unwittingly vote to redefine marriage.
But that's not important. What's important is for us to have the resources available to promote our own pro-marriage message—this has been our winning strategy in every state that has voted to protect marriage. And with your help, we can do it again.
Keep up with the latest marriage updates at www.NationForMarriage.org and www.NOMblog.com—we are only 35 days away from Election Day in November, and we need the supporters of marriage to stay informed!
Thank you for your generosity. Together we will ensure that voters have the information they need this November to vote to protect marriage!
The October issue of Journal of Marriage and Family published an analysis by Charles Lau of a British probability sample, “The Stability of Same-Sex Cohabitation, Different-Sex Cohabitation, and Marriage.”
Lau found that cohabiting same-sex couples in Great Britain are twice as likely to break up as cohabiting opposite sex couples — and married couples (all opposite-sex in Great Britain) are at least five times more stable than same-sex couples:
Compared to married couples, the dissolution rates for male and female same-sex cohabiters were seven and five times higher, respectively. Among cohabiters, the differences were smaller: The dissolution rate for male and female same-sex cohabiters was approximately double the rate for different-sex cohabiters.
He also reports no increase in stability of same-sex unions between the 1958 birth cohort and the 1970 birth cohort.
This of course cannot tell us how children fare on average when they are raised by stable same-sex couples, or whether gay marriage will significantly increase stability in same-sex couples. It can tell us why Professor Mark Regnerus’s study turned up so few: They are rare.
General Mills recently claimed it endorsed same-sex marriage for economic reasons. Conn Carroll, senior editorial writer at the Examiner notes that Americans are fleeing blue states for states that have recently passed pro-marriage amendments:
Over the past ten years, millions of Americans have fled Democratic-leaning Blue states for Republican-leaning Red states, according to a new report from the Manhattan Institute.
The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look, focuses mainly on where and why California residents are fleeing the state, but using data from Census and the Internal Revenue Service, the study clearly documents that Americans are fleeing Democratic governance everywhere.
Pro-marriage advocates in the Bay Area are excited to welcome their new Archbishop this Thursday. Our own Brian Brown was interviewed by the New York Times on his thoughts:
"... Supporters of Proposition 8 said they were heartened by the selection of Bishop Cordileone.
“It’s great for the church, and it’s great for San Francisco that he’ll be archbishop,” said Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the many groups that campaigned for Proposition 8. “He’s a real leader on this issue.”
In 2007, Bishop Cordileone, who was auxiliary bishop in San Diego at the time, led an effort to put what would become Proposition 8 on the ballot, Mr. Brown said.
“I don’t know whether it would have gotten on the ballot in the first place,” he said. “So he was very indispensable.”
As the chairman of the defense of marriage subcommittee, Bishop Cordileone has written that marriage should be limited to the union between a man and a woman because “marriage has been and should remain a child-centered institution.”
Brian Brown at the NoWiggins bus tour stop in Marshalltown, Iowa rallies the troops for marriage and for the constitution:
Paid for by National Organization for Marriage, 2029 K Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC, Brian Brown, President. Not authorized by any candidate, candidate’s committee, or ballot issue committee.
Bill McGurn on the new intolerance over pro-marriage speech:
"... The targeting of Chick-fil-A is but one front in an ugly campaign where the goal isn't so much to prevail in a political argument as to buffalo opposing voices into silence.
We saw this in California recently, when individuals who had contributed to Proposition 8—a ballot initiative backing traditional marriage—found gay-rights activists pressuring their employers. We saw it in the campaign to get corporations to withdraw from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a pro-market organization of state legislators that found itself branded racist for supporting state voter-ID and stand-your-ground laws. We saw it even earlier, in 2005, when the Schwab financial services firm came under fire for supporting the libertarian Cato Institute and Social Security privatization—not to mention similar efforts to get corporations to withdraw from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In one sense, these examples are all different. In the Proposition 8 case, activists targeted individuals; the Chick-fil-A matter, by contrast, involves a private company threatened by government officials, while the attacks on Schwab and ALEC zero in on the donations of large, publicly traded companies.
In the most critical sense, however, the goal is the same. Whether the means involve Federal Election Commission disclosure requirements, Securities and Exchange Commission rules on shareholder resolutions, or simply tagging those with opposing views as "hate groups," the object is clear: to limit debate by forcing one side off the playing field. -- Wall Street Journal
The openly homosexual star came under fire from campaign groups after he stated that children "need a father and a mother", adding, "(I) can't think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads."
He subsequently clarified his remarks, insisting he is not "against" same-sex couples having kids, but he has now revealed that he has since received a number of nasty messages.
Everett tells British newspaper the Daily Telegraph, "I've now had all this hate mail and there have been death threats, too... All the queens out there now have it in for me. I'm loathed by them. I'm having to take evasive action."
Six-time Pro Bowl center Matt Birk, a Catholic and married father of six children who grew up in St. Paul, Minn., has appeared in an online video for the Minnesota Catholic Conference where he asks voters to keep marriage between only a man and a woman. Birk also wrote an editorial that appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
So says a County Attorney’s declaration filed on May 22, 2012 in a federal case challenging the polygamy ban on constitutional grounds:
